A Case of You
by scullyseviltwin
Summary: Another Sara angst piece. Spoilers for 711 on.


_Thanks to mingsmommy for the beta._

* * *

There were different kinds of time, as far as Sara was concerned. With Grissom and without. There were different types of naked. Nudity without him around and beautiful nakedness when he was present, a treat to indulge in.

Ice cream tasted better when he was the one to scoop it, wine better when he poured it. Her plush bed looked far more inviting when his heavy frame was draped casually across it. Every night it was like she was breaking down, just a little. Loving him was sweet agony, a feeling that was so strong that she wanted it to stop, wanted it to intensify until it made her teeth sing.

There were certain aspects of making love with him that left her unbalanced, frightened; it made her cry, every time. Every time he would slide two of his fingers over the apple of a cheek as he shuddered and came and whispered in so many ways that he loved her. Laid open, bare, completely helpless to him, Sara would return the words in kind, swallowing the pocket of bliss that bloomed in her chest.

There wasn't any doubt that he meant it, either; that was the worst, that there was no uncertainty. When his big blue eyes would look down upon her brown ones, she couldn't hide from the truth. Did anyone, she wondered, know how painful it was to stare at forever? When the sweat would drip from his forehead to hers she would nearly lose it because she didn't care at all about the sweat or the heat or the pain, just the fact that he was sharing it all with her.

A changed woman was what she was and she hated it, loved to hate it, loved him.

Sara could give a play by play to anyone who asked, about what their first intimate encounter had been like. Sweaty palms on his part as they walked along her street, hands clutched together as though if the pressure was any less, one or the other would float away. He was going to return to her place with her for a brief visit, perhaps some coffee but Sara had fucked that tidy plan up when she pressed her lithe body flush against his and took his earlobe between her teeth.

She never really liked waiting...

The cliché things were even a bit better, more beautiful, worth waiting for.

When he'd left, she'd done the cliché things that she should have. A temper tantrum.

Sara ripped up the ticket stub she'd saved from their first movie. She deleted all of the photos they'd taken while tipsy, all of them from her computer and digital camera. She tossed his bottle of shampoo and the condoms that were in her bedside drawer. The spices he bought went hurtling into the wastebasket. Magazines gone, CD's shoved into a flimsy plastic bag. She tore away everything that reminded her of him.

But upon second thought and through tears she retrieved the pieces of the ticket and taped them back together, put Eric Clapton back in her stereo, placed his cheap Axe body wash back in her shower. That was the last place her legs would carry her before she collapsed in tears on the rim of the tub, wishing that her place wasn't so diffused with _him_.

"Being with you changed me, I'm changed," Grissom had told her once, his chin pressing into her stomach in an uncharacteristic display of intimacy. "I'm now an avid flosser and I listen to new music," and it was because he couldn't voice the real shifts in himself that he needed to cover it with a veneer of artificiality.

Sadly, she'd smiled and responded, "Well, oral hygiene is very important." Fingers in the hair at his temples, Sara had rubbed until he'd grumbled sleepily, turning until the soft breaths from his mouth fell over the elastic of her panties.

She hated that she wanted to thread her fingers through his hair and tug, hated how she wanted to watch him clean powdered sugar off of the corner of his lips, hated that she was so busy hating him.

The times when they made love, he'd thread their fingers together and he'd bond them like they were adhering souls. She'd find beauty and respite, repletion and fantastic future in his eyes, in his touch, in the few words that he'd allow to tumble from his lips.

Maybe if she was a musician she could put some words or melody to her thoughts, play on heartstrings and reach him in a way she was never sure she would. If she was a musician, perhaps her fingers would have worked differently, pressed his keys into different combination to produce a fracture harmony instead of disjointed bars.

No coda. And she wouldn't even get a chance to go back and play the measure over again.

Much easier to think in metaphors instead of just to think that she wanted to cry and wanted him to stay away and wanted every bit not to love him and couldn't stand what was going on, wondering if she was supposed to understand, if she should understand or if this would or should be the last straw.

Constant, like a perfidious preacher too set in his faith for change, he said he was different. Changing, had changed, was hers and hers and... yeah. After drinking his endless kisses like a riverbed in dire need of replenishing she'd taken the kisses and the praise and the sweat and pain because they were his to give.

Resolve was what she needed.

Because he wasn't different and neither was she and they both had to stop thinking they could change each other.

Resolve.

Sara wasn't sure she had much left. Wasn't sure that she knew what resolve was any more.

Sara sat down on her cold floor and slipped out the tattered dictionary from the shelf and looked up 'resolve' and 'love' and 'without' and realized they were as vague as she'd always thought.

No thesaurus needed.

* * *

_Just before our love got lost you said  
I am as constant as a northern star  
And I said, constant in the darkness  
Where's that at?  
If you want me I'll be in the bar..._

_A Case of YouJoni Mitchell _


End file.
